Rush Limbaugh Program - June 9, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3

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June 9, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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June 9, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3

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	Hey, welcome back.
	Great to have you, my friends, Rush Limboss, serving humanity.
	Simply by showing up.
	As usual, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
	It's always a thrill and a delight to have you with us.
	Fastest three hours in media, only one hour to go.
	I remember on this program, this goes back early 90s.
	It might have even been the late 80s.
	One of it was it was uh one of those maybe ten issues over the course of the history of the program that just drove people bonkers.
	Remember the 86 Tax Reform Act, which eliminated credit card interest deduction.
	That drove people nuts.
	The next thing along the similar lines was ATM fees.
	Remember that, Snertley.
	When ATM fees went up to a dollar, you would have thought that the end of the country was dead ahead.
	I mean, people were livid.
	They hated the banks anyway.
	Then the banks started charging them a buck every time they went to drew money, draw money out of an ATM machine.
	Their own money, their own money, their own money.
	Yeah, that was just uh and this this Sarah Palin business is another one.
	But along the lines of the ATM business, the country's banks are waking up today with a $15 billion hangover.
	The U.S. Senate yesterday swept aside a move backed by uh Chuck Yu Schumer and Christian Gillibrand in New York to delay implementation of an 80% cut to the debit card swipe fee in an ATM machine, a move that'll drain up to 1.3 billion dollars a month or $15 billion a year from the banks.
	In other words, Schumer and Gillibrand stood in the way of a piece of legislation that would reduce ATM fees.
	54 to 45 vote in the Senate capped six months of legal arm twisting and intense lobbying from both sides of the banking sector, which supported the delay.
	The retailers, which pushed for the new cap, paved the way for a cut from 63 cents to 12 cents in the fee that stores pay banks for each debit card purchase.
	So it's not really ATMs, but it's a debit card swipe.
	And the banks are not being hit now with new charges, essentially.
	It's a great consumer benefit.
	It's not.
	It's not.
	Well, of course, of course, of course, but on the on the on the surface of it, the banks take a big hit.
	Of course, the consumer will end up paying for it somewhere else along the line, but the appearance of it is that the banks get screwed.
	And of course, consumers will rally around that.
	They'll think that's uh that's fabulous.
	Landmark victory for American consumers that'll give them the break from skyrocketing swipe fees that they have been seeking for years, said Matthew Shea, the CEO of the National Retail Federation, Rachel Wolfe, a spokeswoman for the Merchants Payments Coalition echoed Shay's sentiments for nearly ten years.
	The country's biggest banks and credit card companies have worked tirelessly against these long-awaited reforms.
	On the on the other side, one bank lobbyist was vowing not to give up the fight.
	We're going to continue to push hard for relief from this ill-conceived law.
	Said Frank Keating.
	Does the name ring a bell?
	No, no, no.
	Frank, Frank Keaton, that's Charles Keaton.
	Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma, who is now Republican, CEO of the American Bankers Association, a lobbying group.
	The banks claim they need the higher fee to cover the cost of fraud protection.
	Retailers claim that they can pass along the savings from lower fees in the form of lower prices.
	Now, why am I reminded of cable company rates going down when they never do?
	We'll see if this actually happens.
	Do you expect these reductions to actually be passed along the consumer?
	No, not at least be made up somewhere along the line for and by the banks.
	No no two ways about it.
	Audio soundbite time.
	Jeff Sessions taking a CNN business anchor babe to school on spending and debt.
	It happened this morning on CNN's American morning.
	Now the correspondent here is Christina Romans.
	And she interviewed Senator Sessions who we love here, Republican from Alabama.
	And during a discussion about the debt ceiling and the budget, she said, Look, when you look at the markets, the markets are telling us that they think a debt ceiling is gonna have to be raised.
	The question is the process, how do you get to it?
	What kind of cuts do you need to see?
	Do you think that we'll be able to raise the debt ceiling and it'll buy us time through the end of next year?
	Well, I think the bond market would be awfully disappointed if the debt limit were raised and we did not reduce spending and get a re uh change the trajectory of debt that we're on, which is clearly unsustainable.
	Last week's economic numbers were really troubling with unemployment up, manufacturing down.
	The Fed reported just yesterday that a number of their regions uh had negative uh growth compared to last couple of months.
	Okay, now she tries to argue that well, we gotta spend more, we gotta spend more then.
	The only answer here is to spend more.
	And he just takes her to school with facts.
	He says, We did that.
	And it and it it uh it isn't working.
	She says, Well, your fringe across the aisle meaning the Democrats will use those same statistics to say that this is why we can't be cutting too deeply.
	Uh, because if you cut now, you cut too deeply, you hurt the economy in the near term, longer term that hurts your chances of deficit reduction and getting a debt under control.
	Christine, this is a key question you just raised, and we need to talk about what we know is for the last two and a half years we've borrowed and we've spent uh money we did not have to do.
	To recover from a huge, huge financial crisis uh that nearly took down the American economy.
	We borrowed money we did not have in large amounts from the future to spend the day to artificially stimulate this economy, and it has not worked.
	We've had the lowest bounce back we've ever had from a major recession, it's very, very dangerous.
	And uh, you know, she was not satisfied, of course, because she's got her narrative, she's got her template, and he doesn't know what he's talking about.
	Can we afford to keep seeing all of these jobs disappear?
	And will the private sector magically just recover around it to absorb them?
	If we get this economy on a sound footing, the private sector will recover.
	The idea of Keynesian stimulation of the economy is not working.
	We've already spent uh far too much.
	Yeah, you know, um somehow I knew you'd go back to the Keynesian.
	Well, I mean, it's uh really a national debate, isn't it, Christine?
	Can we artificially by borrowing money from the future, spending it today, generate growth?
	Well, maybe sometime you can make a dent with it, but as a systemic policy, it's disastrous.
	Put us in a position that we can't it that the debt becomes so large it begins to pull our growth down, which is happening today.
	Jeff Sessions, Senator from Alabama, brief time out.
	We'll get back to your phone calls when we return.
	Sit tight, my friends.
	To the phones we return as promised, and Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
	Jeff, I really appreciate your patience.
	He's been on hold for almost the whole show.
	Great to have you here, sir.
	I'd wait a lot longer than that to speak with you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, sir.
	Um It seems like every day these days you're talking about jobs and we're the jobs in the economy.
	I haven't heard you say anything except lower taxes, smaller government to create jobs.
	And I heard that the tax overall tax collection of the federal government today is lower than it was under Reagan.
	I'm thinking to myself that we had eight years of Bus with his low taxes.
	Obama's stimulus package, one third of it was tax cuts, so we've got lower taxes today than we even had under the underneath George Bush.
	The government has to do something to create jobs.
	There's too many people without jobs.
	I'm thinking I I remember the bridge that went down in Minnesota.
	There were all sorts of reports back then about tens of thousands of bridges that need repair.
	Here in Kentucky, we've got mountaintops that have been lopped off to get it the co coal underneath, and they all need to be remediated.
	Superfund sites all across the country that need to be clear cleaned up.
	We've got things that we can do to put people to work.
	And I'll tell you, Rush, I I heard one of your interstitials.
	They talked about, you know, people taking student loans to go to college to make their lives better.
	How is borrowing to go to college to make your life better any different than investing in this country by borrowing today to make bridges better so or or the electrical grid so we don't suffer through huge bat blackouts that cause our economy or student loans so that this country can compete with the rest of the world.
	I mean, I really haven't heard of any plan from you that hasn't been tried for the last ten years now.
	And like I said, taxes are lower now than they were under Nate Reagan.
	No.
	So they're not it's not th that's just absurd.
	And to say that one third of the stimulus was tax cuts is equally as uninformed.
	And to suggest that all these infrastructure projects exist.
	We had a stimulus bill of eight hundred, seven hundred and eighty-seven billion dollars designed to fix all of those.
	Not a single dime went to very much state and local government employees.
	We won't we all know this now.
	The government cannot create jobs.
	The government can only destroy wealth.
	The government cannot create it.
	The government doesn't produce diddly squat.
	You cannot grow an economy by taking money from one segment of it and transferring it to another.
	That's not growth.
	That's simply redistribution.
	And generally it rewards people who aren't doing anything, so there's no productivity whatsoever.
	I don't I I frankly am at a total loss to um understand where you're even coming from on this.
	I I think I made it pretty clear.
	I mean, if you're not sure.
	But you may you might be clear, but you are not right about anything that you said is painfully obvious.
	Well, first of all, I think you're mistaken when you say one third of the stimulus package wasn't tax cuts.
	It was.
	Republicans insisted on it.
	Obama worked with Republicans, said, Hey, listen, I've won the election, I've got these huge majorities, but I'm still going to give you one third of the stimulus.
	Really?
	When you explain to me where those tax cuts were, I mean, how what kind of tax cuts were they?
	There were incentives for businesses to hire and a bunch of other stuff.
	I mean, listen, I'm not a tax lawyer, I'm not a tax guru.
	I want to know, give me the tax cuts.
	Tell me what they were, what the policy was, whose rates were cut, what kind don't tall but don't talk about tax credits, don't talk about I mean, I want genuine tax cuts.
	Rush, I've I I seriously have confidence in you, and I'm sure that if you did the little Google thing, you could see what these tax cuts were just as easily as well.
	No, because they don't exist.
	But it's not up to me to find it.
	It is up to you claim to know that they happen.
	You therefore have to show me.
	Nothing.
	Because it's because it's common knowledge, but I don't have every detail at my fingertips.
	But let's go back to your other claim.
	It's not about these common knowledge.
	And by the way, a lot of people in studal loans are questioning maybe they have thrown away a lot of money because none of them can find any jobs.
	They've got so much debt now that even if they find decent jobs, they're not going to be able to pay back the loans uh for so many years that it might not make it cost effective to have done it in the first place.
	Well, uh I'll agree I I'll agree with you that education has been way too expensive.
	And I think that is a government problem when they make student loans available, colleges just charge more to swallow up more money without delivering jobs in the end or a better life for people in the end.
	I uh graduated law school and I'm looking at 150,000 dollars in student loans.
	Yeah, well and can't find a job that will uh you know allow me to live comfortably and pay those back.
	Okay, so then why why then would the similar kind of borrowing for the government work?
	Well, again, if you don't have blackouts, you don't lose billions of dollars of economic production.
	If you clean up superfund sites, you're putting people to work and giving them a paycheck, they can go out and support local businesses and all the rest.
	Well, why didn't Obama do this?
	Why didn't Obama do any of this then?
	He was given almost a trillion dollars to do all this stuff with.
	Why did he do it?
	Because he fell for the Republican trap, saying give states control of what you're going to do.
	So he did allow the states to fell for the Republican government.
	A lot of the states had Republican governors, and they spent money on crony capitalism the way they always do.
	Let me do you really believe what you've said to me on this call.
	I believe the word of what I do.
	I think a lot of states were facing budget problems and they decided to patch over both.
	Do you really believe we're spending the money?
	Do you really believe that government can create jobs and growing sound of recession?
	You really believe that one-third of the stimulus was tax cuts.
	Do you really believe that tax rates and tax collections today are lower than they were during Reagan?
	Do you really believe tax policy is less punitive than it was under you really believe these things?
	Russ, I believe every word I said, I believe that the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government program, powers large swaths of the South.
	I believe that the percentage of GDP collected in taxes today.
	What is it like it was under Reagan?
	What is it like?
	What is it like?
	Oh, so you really are off OxyContin.
	Uh see, what is it like to go through life being so wrong about everything?
	I can't relate.
	What it what is it like to go through life believing Drivel and Bilge?
	What is it like to be so uninformed and to be happy about it?
	What mu what is it like for you to get up every day and be so ignorant?
	And to believe such poppycock.
	These kinds of people, ladies and gentlemen, are why the country faces the great challenge it faces.
	It is people like this that we have to overcome.
	They can't be counted on to help us recover from this mess because they are creating it with their ignorance and their lack of being informed.
	They've just made the work even harder.
	Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
	Thank you.
	And we are back.
	The big voice on the right.
	Rush Limbaugh.
	As you know, as I've said, folks, the um the country will survive Obama, but it's not going to survive the kind of invincible ignorance that elected him.
	This is the thing that that uh is what Coulter is writing about with her book on uh on mobs and try to explain to people who liberals are.
	At some point, provided we still have elections, we're gonna be able to dispatch of Obama, probably in uh in November 2012.
	But the people who elected him are still going to be around.
	They are still gonna be there.
	And this invincible abject ignorance that they project.
	And I know the guy was a seminar caller, and I know the guy was, you know, trained.
	Um Dick Morris was on I think it was on Ted Baxter last night.
	Dick Morris was explaining that that Hillary's mom was driving along listening to me one day and got just her feelings hurt and outraged and angry listening to me describe Hillary and Bill.
	And it inspired Morris set up way back in the 90s with the Clintons.
	He set up a seminar training camp to train callers how to get on conservative shows, how to get past call screeners and so forth.
	And they are they are still out there.
	And you know, if if um uh Morris's theory is that screeners are susceptible to certain things that uh callers might say that might make it sound like it's gonna be a good call.
	And you get them on the air, and they're just they're just sloganeers and they string together a bunch of bumper sticker slogans.
	What uh they have no idea how idiotic they sound.
	That they have no idea.
	They're self-defeating.
	They have no clue.
	They and they hang up and they think they scored giant points, and they end up sounding totally uninformed, ignorant and and and ludicrous.
	Uh uh and uh and what?
	Oh, yeah, we're we're we're accused of planting these people.
	We're accused of hiring these idiots as uh as actors.
	Somehow.
	It is.
	It's um it's funny.
	Here's here's Sharon in Midland, Texas.
	Hi, Sharon.
	Welcome to the EIB network.
	Hi, Rush.
	Rush?
	Yeah, hi.
	Oh, hi.
	Okay.
	Um I just wanted to call and tell you that I love Sarah Palin.
	And I just am really saddened by these.
	Let me ask you a question.
	Are you an eight, a nine, or a ten?
	What do you mean?
	In terms of being good looking.
	Oh.
	Well, I'm I I don't think I'm bad looking.
	I'm 63 years old, and I I swim um one and three quarters of a mile uh three times a week, and I'm in pretty good shape.
	All right.
	That's good enough for us.
	No, I no, uh, but I I really do think she's a beautiful lady, but most of all, I love her because she loves America, and I like her common sense policies that she talks about the environment, and um she doesn't like Obamacare, and I don't either, and I just think she would be a terrific president, and I hope she runs, and I will vote for her.
	Okay, I appreciate that.
	I I am I I have been struck by all this.
	I was um I was explaining to um uh well I got a I got a flash note here from Levin, my good buddy F. Lee, uh, who was listening to these uh women call and and uh and trash payla and so forth, and we were sharing observations here about the and again, this is anecdotal, it's by no means scientific.
	It's a small, small sample here.
	But the women that are emailing me and calling, present caller excluded, are really making uh uh these the decisions on Palin based on uh emotional uh reactions that they're having to her uh or other other sort of uh I don't know, surface type observations.
	And what's always struck me about that at this particular point in time among conservative women, you know, uh the soccer moms, for example, were all liberal women.
	You remember the soccer mom?
	Do you remember that?
	The Time magazine actually created the soccer mom.
	I I don't know that there actually ever was one.
	They found one to put on the cover, but the soccer mom was essentially a middle-class white woman who was overwhelmed with the duties of motherhood and being a wife.
	But Bill Clinton made her think it was worth it.
	She believed that Bill Clinton cared more about her welfare than her own husband did.
	That was the media created definition of a soccer mom.
	Get up and get the kids breakfast, then get them to school, then clean the house, then you know, what whatever.
	The never-ending day of domestic activities that kept piling up, going to the grocery store, doing this, taking a dog to the vet, whatever it was, picking the kids up after school, taking them to soccer practice, taking a piano practice, whatever it was, then going on fixing dinner, and then lughead husband shows up unappreciative of all of it.
	And and uh and Clinton came along feeling their pain, understanding their plight, making a political appeal to them, and somehow supporting and voting for Clinton was uh uh a way out of that that horrible situation, or at least a way of getting because there was somebody in power who understood.
	That that was the concoction, the soccer mom.
	The conservative women never fell for that.
	A conservative woman would never be a soccer mom.
	The soccer mom was always a caricature of of uh of liberal women.
	Now now here we are at a genuine crossroads for our country's future.
	We have an election coming up that is in the top five of importance since the country's founding.
	We have had two and a half years of Obama with Obamacare, the destruction of the U.S. economy.
	Yeah, the soccer moms thought that Clinton loved them more than their husband did, cared more about them than their husband did.
	Exactly.
	That was the whole point.
	It was it was a way for the media to construct a caricature of Clinton that made him attractive.
	And it was easy to overlook all of his uh womanizing and lying on, because at the end of the day, he cared and he understood.
	But it was all it was it was all a concoction.
	You fast forward to today.
	The Tea Party has effervesced out of nothing.
	There's no leader.
	There is nobody banging a drum.
	There is no single person inspiring the Tea Party to do what it did.
	It's made up of people largely who had never been politically active.
	They voted maybe, but they've never gone to a town hall meeting, and they've certainly never gone to Washington to join some kind of a protest.
	And in the midst of all of this, we have a candidate out there, Sarah Palin, who whatever else she is, is without question a conservative.
	I don't care whatever else people might think she is, including the dumb and stupid that people have attached to her because the media has.
	But the future of this country is all about having people in power who genuinely reflect and share our cultural, social, moral, and political values.
	And to hear conservatives just automatically reject one of them for emotional specious reasons, surprises me given how serious things are right now.
	I asked myself, could a Margaret Thatcher get today's Republican Party nomination?
	Well, I would like to think so.
	Sterling's interesting without question, I would like to think so.
	But given the Republican establishment, and given the Republican operatives and the attitudes of some conservative women, I don't know.
	I I guess it's an open question.
	But from what we've heard, and again, it's a small sample, it's anecdotal, it is not cannot say that what we've heard here is uh representative sample of American thinker across country American thinking.
	Uh it does appear that where Palin is concerned, the emotional and superficial is enough to disqualify her.
	In the midst of how serious things are, despite the fact that she is from top to bottom satisfactory on the conservative side of the issue, Dial.
	Maybe even maybe even more so.
	Now, I'm not endorsing, don't misunderstand, and I'm again probably not making myself as clear as I as I would like to be on this.
	But just surprises me that as serious as things are, and as crucial as the next election is, to just automatically reject somebody who issue-wise is pretty close to what we want for other reasons,
	makes me wonder just how serious people take the circumstances that we find ourselves in.
	And maybe they don't think it's as serious as I do.
	Anyway, I still haven't made myself clear on this.
	I've got to struggle and uh maybe I can make myself understood before the program ends, but I've got to take a brief obscene profit timeout right now.
	We'll do that, come back right after this and continue.
	There's one other factor on this Palin business, folks, to explain Why there is abject loathing and hatred for Palin out there on part of some women.
	If let's go back to the day that she showed up with McCain, he picks her, she's the vice presidential nominee, they showed up Indiana wherever it was.
	She delivers the Barnburner speech, husband hears it, goes home at night.
	Did you see this as Palin?
	Who was she?
	God was she great.
	Wife is gonna hate her.
	Just because the husband is singing her praises.
	And the husband could be totally talking about nothing but issues.
	She was right on this, she was right on that.
	I hate her.
	You never talk that way about me, kind of stuff.
	Never know.
	I mean, there's another factor that you have to throw in.
	Here's Dick Morris last night on the O'Reilly factor explaining how he invented the seminar caller.
	Uh O'Reilly said, When you were working in a Clinton White House, you had legions of liberals uh to go out and put on programs like this, did you did you not?
	Here's why.
	One night Clinton called me about one in the morning, and uh his mother-in-law, Hillary's mom, had just driven from Pittsburgh to Washington, and on route had listened on the radio to a guy named Rush Limbaugh.
	She didn't know who he was.
	And she told the president, told Hillary, then told the president, you know, he attacked you the whole trip.
	So Clinton called me and said, We're getting clobbered on radio.
	We don't have anybody to speak up for our point of view.
	So I organized a speaker's bureau in the Democratic National Committee to be able to push people out to get them on shows like yours to push the administration line.
	Dick Morris claiming that he invented and created the seminar caller last night with uh with Bill O'Reilly.
	That uh Clinton had no idea, uh didn't know what was going on.
	The job creator.
	Uh sorry, a simple job creator working hard to create jobs out there.
	Seminar caller jobs paid for by the Democrat National Committee.
	Heather in Blacksburg, Virginia.
	Welcome to the program.
	Thank you, Rush.
	Uh, just to let you know, I am officially not a seminar caller, so I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
	I can tell.
	I can spot them in the first sentence.
	I can spot them with the attitude.
	Oh, well, good.
	Well, that that's a compliment.
	Thank you.
	You bet.
	Yes.
	Why do so many women dislike Sarah Palin?
	And I have a thought.
	In my opinion, it's not her looks.
	I think it's because Sarah is comfortable in her own skin.
	She has self-confidence, so she's not afraid to fail.
	And I think that's very intimidating to a lot of women.
	Um it's funny, you were talking about this a minute ago, but she almost seems to have a male perspective.
	You know, that logic versus emotion.
	Yep.
	Uh, if my husband's listening, he's gonna shoot me, but um, I mean it as a compliment.
	He reminds us the way she thinks reminds me of my husband.
	He has this I am who I am kind of attitude, you know.
	If you like me, great.
	If not, it's your problem.
	Yep.
	It's not condescending, it's just pure self-confidence.
	Well, you know, you're right.
	Self-confidence and self-assuredness does rub people the wrong way because most people aren't.
	Yes.
	Self-assuredness.
	I even like that terminology better.
	I think I think I think she exudes that.
	I think she has it through and through, and that's very interesting.
	I've been told from you know, from the early days of this program that that's uh why the you know the few women that don't like me don't.
	It's because nobody is supposed to be assured of themselves as I am.
	Nobody!
	Somebody, you just supposed to have some doubt.
	Nobody's supposed to be that self-assured, rubs them the wrong way.
	Uh and it it's uh an interesting psychological analysis, which is not over.
	I'm sure this is gonna continue.
	Well, that's it, folks.
	Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is in the can.
	And it I can tomorrow's Friday already, right?
	It's amazing.
	It's amazing how fast a week goes by when you have Monday off.
	I have to remember that.

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